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Richard’s brain surgery a success: Fiorito

Richard Javier says it was a miracle. I say it was science. Let us split the difference; what matters is that he’s alive.

You recall the story.

The doctors found a tumor in his brain some months ago; the news hit him right between the eyes, which is more or less the location of the tumor.

The situation was made worse by circumstance: he is an insurance broker, but he had not been on permanent staff long enough to qualify for long-term disability; his short-term disability ended as the operation was performed. Oh, and his wife is pregnant with their second child; she is due in December.

It is a good thing they take life as it comes.

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I went to see Richard recently. I tapped on the door of his apartment and heard the sound of his cane as he neared. He said, “I made it, I made it; my second life.”

We sat at the kitchen table while his wife prepared their son for bed; I heard the splashing and giggling of a boy at his bath, and there is no happier sound.

Richard said, “The operation was scheduled for the morning, 9:45. My wife drove me down. She was very brave, very calm.”

His skull was about to be invaded, and his brain insulted; what about him — was he also brave and calm? He said, “It was just like going to work.”

I’d have been a mess.

He said, “She’s from Little Italy, I’m from Kensington Market. We’re survivors; we keep our cool.” I did not want to let it go as easily as that; he was on the way to an invasion of his brain, from which he would emerge as Richard, or less-than-Richard, or maybe Richard-not-at-all.

“If it was my time, so be it.”

What did he say to his wife when the nurses came for him? “I said she should do something, go for lunch.”

Anything to distract.

“The operation took five and a half hours, maybe six. They went in through my nose, through both nostrils. There was a hole in my skull, from the tumor; they made it bigger. The tumor was about three inches in.”

It was the size of a walnut; the doctors got it all. It appears to have been benign.

And I cannot imagine.

Not true; my stomach churns when I imagine.

He said, “I woke up in the operating room, just as they were packing up. They still had their masks on. They were moving me from the table. I heard them talking. I asked if they removed the tumor. The doctors started laughing.”

A job well done, then.

Richard spent some time in intensive care, among people who had aneurysms or fractured skulls: life waiting here, death waiting there.

“Eventually, they put me in a semi-private room. There was a woman, she was terminal; brain cancer, no mercy. I spent two or three nights, the most frightening of my life. One morning I heard a doctor ask her, “Madam, if your heart stops beating, would you like us to resuscitate?’ She said no.”

The pain of others is harder to bear when you are in pain yourself; how is he feeling now?

“I can feel movement in my brain; it’s not pleasant.” Movement, as his brain shifts back into the space vacated by the tumor. He also said, “There is some discharge from my nose.” About this, you do not want to know.

He said, “I can’t smell anything, but that will come back. My balance is off. I won’t be running or biking for a while. I should be healed in 10 or 12 weeks. They’ll check on me for the rest of my life.”

For the moment, he and his wife can still afford day care for their son. But money is tight, and his employment insurance has yet to kick in.

His financial future is unclear.

If there is a glimmer of hope, it is that his job was secure; that, at least, is something. He does not know when he will be able to go back to work or if, until he does, there will be any movement on his benefits.

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